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Hi,
I'm trying to link content from a table cell to various other places on my indesign document. Our company manufactures accessories and each item has a myriad specifications and forms (most of which repeat information found on other forms), I'm trying to devise a system where all the information goes into one form, and the other forms are linked to the relevant data- instead of manually having to fill in the same information on several forms (and raising the likelihood of mistakes).
I set up a master page which contains a table with all relevant specifications and I had hoped to link cells to elsewhere in the document. It didnt seem possible to link individual cells, so I tried dropping text boxes into the cells and linking those. I was able to link them outside of the table, but the linked boxes arnt updating when I 'update all links'.
In the above image you'll notice that I had content collected the box associated with 'style #:' and linked it outside of the table. When I changed the value to 'style12345' and hit update all links, the linked box retained the original value of 'style1234'. I don't have any problem linking text boxes when the table isnt involved, but I like the functionality offered by tables (all below lines dropping when I have a line break, selecting all text in a cell without selecting the category).
If anyone can help with my issue or suggest another means of accomplishing the same goal, I'd be thrilled to hear it.
Best,
David
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Is there a way to define text variables using a form such as the one above? Without having to open the text variables menu and define each variable?
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You could set variables based on paragraph styles:
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I'm not sure I fully understand your process- I have very little experience working with paragraph and character styles. I've created a text variable based on a paragraph style, but I'm unsure of how to contain a string within a paragraph style (so that it is represented by the text variable).
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This is what I've got. The top text box has my style # variable, the bottom text box uses the style # paragraph style, and contains the text 'asdasd'. Given that the variable says it grabs the first text on the page, I expected that this is all that needed doing, but as you can see my variable isnt updating.
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I think I've got it figured out now. I was working on a master page so I'm not sure if my indesign recognized the header.
Thanks!
I'll still be leaving the topic open, because I'm worried my workplace/network may wipe my text variables/preferences.
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Hi,
Note if text inserted jumped on several lines, use "variables" has no sense and fails in your process!
(^/)
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Right you are.. Several of my fields often end up taking more than one line, and its just sitting the letters on top of eachother in a single line. Is there any workaround for this?
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Yeap!
Do you mean this?
[On left] The table is on a specific master page. [On right] Current pages with text.
If you change the table content as done in the second screenshot, only 1 click to update the current text!
(^/)
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Note we play with real editable text and not "variable" considered by ID as a single char!!!
(^/)
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I'm not quite sure what you've done- would you mind clarifying your process for me?
Just to update everyone on what I've tried so far, I have two versions which both have cons:
The version which uses linked text boxes which arnt placed in a table and thus doesn't offer the functionality of a table.
This version is one of the forms with text variables which would be filled by rolling header paragraph styles (placed inside of a table) defined on a previous page. Being that text variables are a single character, my entries are unable to line break.
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Imho, don't use "variables" or "text frames links", just simply cross-references!
Really simple!
At the moment, no time to explain more! Maybe vinny38 could finish!
(^/)
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Nope... Week-end Time 🙂
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Its okay as long as I know what tool you're using I'll probably figure the rest out. Cross references caught my eye when I was first starting this project but I assumed it would only really work for page number references. Thanks, guys!
I'll be back if run into any trouble.
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Is there any way to protect the cross reference marker from being deleted? If I ctrl-A a cell to replace its contents I lose the reference. Additionally, given that the references target a document, if I rename the .id file to the appropriate style number, would the references carry over?
I'm also having trouble referencing an empty cell, and having the reference update when I put content in the cell (even if I apply a paragraph style to the cell).
Thanks for all the help guys- I wish this was as simple as linking a cell (I'd think this would be a popular function).
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This is whats happening when I replace a referenced cells contents (with ctrl-A), or attempt to reference an empty cell. I get a flag indicating that the reference is missing.
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When you create a link as the CR, ID inserts a "blue-metachar" marker ":"
If you replace "Sith" by "Jedi", take care to not remove this marker!
Yes we could write, if time, a script that would find all the contents of this 2nd column on this master page, search each term in the current pages, e.g. as: "Sith" and replace them by the corresponding cross-reference (to be created) to make the link!
Just 1 click!
… But, personally, no time!
(^/)
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I'm a little behind on a lot of the tools you guys are referring to, so I'm not aware of their functionality. This is more of a pet project for me, something I knew could be bettered through use of indesign, but I typically work in illustrator and photoshop- using indesign for simply layouts.
Obi-wan, if I understand this correctly:
Obi-wan Kenobi wrote:
If the Table terms number isn't too great and their content clearly identified and different, he could create only one single CR for each term! and, when done, for each, play a simple grep find/replace to find each one, e.g., in my sample: "Sith" (as static text) and replace it by "Sith" (as a CR). I should use a condition to "lock" this process! [We can talk about this later if David plays in that way!!]
Do you mean to say that entering information in my cell would find/change the previous value in the background? I unfortunately have no experience scripting in indesign, and someone would have to write that for me. I'll continue working with solutions that I'm able to implement.
I've also not worked with conditional text- someone may have to enlighten me as to its functionality and how it might serve to accomplish my goals. If I'm understanding obi-wan correctly, it would be used to apply a tag of sorts to my values, which would allow other processes to either ignore or reference the associated string?
That being said, the solution I reach will have to be one which doesnt require my coworkers to use find/change, or access any of indesigns tools. Data must simply be entered into a cell and processed. They arnt at all familiar with the program.
@jane-e I'd be interested in hearing whether you think data merge would be a viable solution. If you think it could work I'll certainly give it a try.
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David,
You'll need a deeper consulting approach [with the creation of a centralized database …]!
I can't discuss and help you more in the context of this forum!
(^/)
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Pickysticks wrote:
That being said, the solution I reach will have to be one which doesnt require my coworkers to use find/change, or access any of indesigns tools. Data must simply be entered into a cell and processed. They arnt at all familiar with the program.
@jane-e I'd be interested in hearing whether you think data merge would be a viable solution. If you think it could work I'll certainly give it a try.
Try Data Merge on a small sample and see if it works
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/data-merge.html
The panel is pretty self explanatory, and if any one has done Mail Merge in Word, they know the concept. You edit the data in Excel, and merge a base document into a new document.
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So I've got the basic idea of data merge down and its certainly promising. I'm wondering now if theres any way to make the excel spreadsheet look more like a table so that entering data is less confusing (being limited to a column header and a value in the following row makes for a very long/unwieldy excel doc).
The only thought that comes to mind is that I could potentially link a normal looking excel spreadsheets cells to my data merge base- inputting data on the normal sheet and having it be reflected in the data merge doc, and finally on indesign.
Any ideas?
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I only have an iPad tonight, so I do not know if this will work in Data Merge. (It should.)
In Excel you can link to another cell.
Click in the cell you want to be in (the one for InDesign)
Type =
Click in the cell with the data (The one for your users)
Excel will pick up the syntax. You can then copy the formula across the row or column.
These two tables can be on different sheets.
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Hi there,
If you intend to use the Data merge feature - which looks like a good idea in regard of many of your considerations - you should keep a couple of things in mind:
Yes, the idea is first to create an good-looking Excel document (XLS, XLSX, XLSM...), meaning with identified headers, table style and so on... All datas will be stored here, and this is the file that your colleagues will work with. Nice and easy.
Pros (non-exhaustive) :
Cons/warnings (non-exhaustive😞
I'm trying to link content from a table cell to various other places on my indesign document
Hope that helps, let us know if you manage to go through this.
Vinny
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Thanks for the information Vinny!
Soft brakes have been applied to my project as we're getting busy with designs at the moment. This is more of a side thing that I don't think my manager would fully appreciate until its complete. We're pretty disorganized.
Now that I'm back in the office I'll share some screengrabs of some of our forms, to give you guys a better understanding of what I'm working with.
So, these are few of the forms I work with, and the excel documents I've been working on.
The bottom excel document is my csv file, and I had attempted to define names which linked to cells in the organized excel file on top. I put the names in each of the csv files cells and saved the file, only to find that the csv wouldn't retain the name information- only the final value. I suppose using a non csv while structured in the same way, and saving the file as csv when outputting data would work, but I'm guessing there are less cumbersome solutions.
When I'm more free to work on this project I'll see what I can do with your suggestions, Vinny, and will report back here. Thanks!